Archives for February 2014

Hello there! I want to tell you about the best ever (and my first) giveaway on my Instagram feed. I am posting it tomorrow morning, but for you lucky ones, who are reading this on Sunday instead of Monday, aren’t you glad that you stopped by a day early? My friend Jill Lauck happens to have the best taste in the whole wide world. Just have a look at her Pinterest board, and you will agree. We talked about this idea when she was in the Bay Area visiting last December, and decided that we should do a souvenir giveaway!!! In March, we will be traveling to opposite sides of the globe. I will be in Tokyo and Singapore to teach a few calligraphy workshops and she is heading to Paris. You would think we would plan better so that we could travel together. Our beautiful souvenir giveaway, is really just a fun project for us, and for you, we hope! Of course, you can’t see a photo of the prize just yet! But we do promise that they will be a well-curated assortment of our favorite keepsakes. No refrigerator magnets, not that there is anything wrong with that. The items will be sent in a beautiful wooden box, complete with calligraphy on your mailing label by yours truly! Here’s how you can enter: 1.re-post this image (above) with the hashtag #mbelleandjillsouvenir 2.Follow and tag us in the post @maybelleimasa @jilllauck 3. Three random winners { one per city} will be announced on March 15 and parcels sent first week in April! It’s going to be fun selecting these items! You can share this on any social media platform if you like. We will post previews on our feed. Good luck everyone!

Hello lovely readers. This is just a quick note to pop in and say hello. When I finally finished my website design last year, I was so happy that I could easily post on my blog. Easier said than done. As you know, I am a busy mom of 4.5 year old twins, and they are about to start kindergarten in the fall. In December, we must have toured a dozen schools and I found only ONE school here in Oakland that still incorporates cursive handwriting in their curriculum. This is a subject for another post, but it makes me so sad that in our lifetime we may see this vanish from our schools all together. Based on the amount of students attending my workshops, it gives me hope that there are still many people interested in it, and they will teach their kids so on and so forth. I wanted to give you a brief update about my workshops since I last posted.

In October I taught a few (eight) workshops in Sydney and Melbourne and I will be in Australia again this May 2014, including Brisbane at The School. A lovely gal by the name of Galina in Sydney attended my class and posted about it on her blog, Galina Loves. You can read and see her gorgeous photos on her blog post here. On my only day off in Sydney, I spent the most wonderful day with Jessie James of Supply Paper Co. She took me to all of her favorite places, including Sibella Court’s The Society Inc. By pure coincidence, I ran into Jordan Ferney of Oh Happy Day and her husband Paul while they were in Australia!!! Maybe you remember, last January I taught a workshop at Oh Happy Day, sponsored by Bing. You can read Jordan’s post about her dream trip to Australia and New Zealand here.

In November, I was invited to teach a workshop in Portland at Schoolhouse Electric in collaboration with Egg Press along with Ana Mara Flowers at their wonderful warehouse. One of the attendees Lindsey Boccia took some great photos and shared it on her blog. It was an amazing day in a beautiful city and I cannot wait to return to Portland. In December, I taught a workshop at Makeshift Society with all proceeds to benefit the Red Cross Philippines Typhooon Haiyan. It was a workshop followed by silent auction and we raised over $3,000.

I took a break over the holidays with a trip to NYC and Boston with my family. January rolled around and I made a list of dream places that I would like to hold workshops. First stop on my list Los Angeles to one of my favorite places for workshops at Poketo. I’ll be back in July 2014 along with an advanced workshop!

February was our first every “Petals and Penmanship” in collaboration with my friend Kiana Underwood of Tulipina . The workshop was held at Angie Cao’s photography studio in San Francisco. I shall share more about thatlater, for now here is a recap from Dressed in Orange. Kiana and I are planning another workshop soon, more details later.

March (next week!) I am off to Tokyo to teach four workshops at Fog Linen and then Singapore with one of my favorite blogs ever Bloesem and her new venture: Bloesem Class. I promise I will be try to update this blog more often than I have been, but I need to know: Does anyone read this blog? What would you like to know more about? In the meantime, you can see what I am doing every day on my mini-blog: (my instagram feed) and you will get to see snippets of my journey to Asia.